Bog Myrtle & Peat

It’s not easy to write about grouse shooting anymore, but it is interesting to think about how people respond to controversy and the threat of “enemies”. Because when I shared a recent article about misinformation on social media, I was widely regarded as an enemy. Perhaps it was naïve of me to open some of this discussion online with a nudge of deliberate provocation. I had anticipated a degree of resistance and pushback, but it was difficult to grasp the level of antagonism expressed in response to my article. I had become a bad guy – a “twat” and a “dickhead” – nothing I had ever done had any value whatsoever, as if my skin had been revealed as the zipped-up suit of an alien. 

It was hard to take many of those negative comments too seriously. Following a statistical breakdown behind the scenes, I could tell that at certain points, I was getting more complaints than readers. People weren’t even clicking through the link to read what I had said – they simply saw that I was in favour of grouse shooting and decided that I was ripe for a kicking… which slightly supported my original point – you don’t have to understand a thing in order to hate it.

But it was also interesting how the spectre of raptor persecution emerged as a powerful source of fury and outrage. My article looked at how the debate is influenced by things that aren’t true. In doing so, I had not focussed my attention on things which are true. As a consequence, I was trashed for failing to explain that there’s a connection between grouse shooting and raptor persecution – the inference was therefore that I was obfuscating the main issue at hand. And from there, it was easy to suggest that I was complicit in the killing of raptors… because there are no other angles to discuss. Grouse shooting is raptor persecution. If you support the sport, you endorse the crime. End of story.

Given that this debate has sometimes looked like a really interesting chance to exchange views on complicated issues which mean a great deal to me, I found this reduction extremely disappointing.

As comments and criticisms rolled in, it became clear that raptor persecution is regarded as such an egregious sin that nothing else really matters. In fact, it’s so bad that it doesn’t need any other supporting arguments – it’s the silver bullet, the smoking gun and the executioner’s axe in one single issue. I shouldn’t be surprised that people who have really invested in the issue of raptor persecution refuse to engage with any arguments in favour of grouse shooting – they just don’t want to hear any defence of the sport. But it is notable that they also refuse to acknowledge the existence of any other argument in favour of an outright ban. I tried to talk about other aspects of the discussion, but I had not foreseen this level of singlemindedness. At times the reaction was almost hysterical – it was clear that while raptor persecution is very much not the most pressing conservation issue of the day, it’s certainly the most emotionally powerful one. 

At one point, I was being challenged to commit myself to make written or recorded statements about raptor persecution on behalf of the entire shooting community. If you read the original article, perhaps you’ll wonder how it ended up here – but this moment reinforced a sense of “sides”, as if by having shown support for an “industry”, I suddenly became a de facto spokesman for every aspect of it. The implication was also that, as a representative of my “side”, I was personally responsible for everything that shooting people have ever said or done. It would be crazy for me to suggest that every single person who opposes grouse shooting stands by each and every half-baked claim that’s ever been made against the sport. As discussed previously, some of it’s complete mince. And yet because I support grouse shooting, I was being held responsible for every silly idea and action ever put into circulation by “my team”. It turns out that there are no individuals allowed in this debate – only “armies”.

None of this bore any relation to the point I’d set out to make. I started to wish I’d never opened my damn mouth and I probably won’t again, not least because there seemed almost no agreement with my wider point that the debate is rubbish. Depressingly, nobody seemed to express any appetite for a move towards truth and balance. Anti-grouse campaigners are winning their battle, and maybe the system’s only crap if you’re losing. The clearest arguments against what I had written were silly tit-for-tats which seemed to say “you say we make stuff up? Well, you make stuff up”.

Of course it’s obvious that both sides make stuff up. It’s absolutely true that shooting has a case to answer when it comes to criticisms about lawbreaking and environmental sustainability – raptor persecution is a powerful argument against the sport; burning is relevant too, although it’s too complex to provide a knock-out punch and it’s often a valuable tool in the box. But on the contrary, there are several good arguments to support grouse shooting too – for my part, I’m curious why anti-grouse campaigners are so keen to disprove the obvious truth that grouse moors are great for red-listed wading birds. This cast-iron fact is being attacked all the time, as if it’s not enough to outweigh the good stuff with the bad… it’s necessary to disprove the existence of any good stuff whatsoever. That’s what I found most surprising about the response to my article. The feedback from anti-grouse campaigners was actually heated with a sense that this debate should not be based upon an exchange of views anyway. Their dynamic is “We punch you – you do NOT punch back”.

Whatever. It seems clear that there are heroes and villains on both sides of the argument – but if grouse shooting is going to be banned, wouldn’t you prefer it to be banned for reasons which actually exist? Or does it simply not matter.